Vault 24 Alpha version 0.5 has been released. It details the Waterworks and Lower Stairwell levels, and optimizes the Upper Stairwell and Apartments A level. Several other levels have been tweaked/bug fixed. Music and ambient effects have been added throughout the vault.

Progress continues unabated for Vault 24. The past two weeks has seen me focusing on the Waterworks and Lower Stairwell levels. Both these levels only require final dynamic cluttering, optimization and navmeshing . With this version the Upper Stairwell and Apartments A levels have also been optimized. Music and ambient sound-effects have been added throughout the vault.

The Waterworks Level

The Waterworks level took a while, but turned out to be well worth the effort. It is very dark, foggy, and detailed. The design is based around the four elevators of the vault's main shaft, so there is some repetition within the layout. However, the clutter, lighting and size of the level make up for this and lend to the level's uniqueness. The level is very heavy on models and effects, and will likely stress even good machines until it is optimized, and even then will still likely not be a 'light' level. Below are a few representative screens of the level.

Waterworks Level Screens

Additionally, this level includes a finished version of the lower Stairwell, which was previously included, but had now cluttering or detailing. This level will likely receive a bit more attention in the next update, though it looks fairly good now.

Next up will be overall polishing sweeps through numerous levels, as well as continuing optimization of levels.

The next planned phase, once I take a breather from the task at hand, will be to add a quest of some kind. I have a number of ideas on hold, and they range from the simple dungeon crawl, up to a full sized, epic quest which actually tie in with the main quest of the game.

However, what I will end up doing will depend on whether I enlist any modders. I also may just jump on board another project that uses the mod, depending on what develops.

I also may open it up in geck and edit it some. Clean it up and make it brand new, add a few cryo chambers and a medical research piece into it. Might also add a companion in one of the cryo chambers just for kicks and place a storyline into the entire thing, or I could just turn it into a giant enclave bunker instead of a vault.